Ok, please try and stay as civil as possible in this thread as I really do want to hear ideas and feelings from folks.

Not F this or F that.

Basically, we had a mass of posts about why and how PK should be curbed, with people jumping on the bandwagon for each. Poll went up with "Should PK be curbed" and I believe it came up for YES it should. Some people cheered, some people began to gripe when seeing what was on the horizon.

Several threads went up on various systems to curb unnecessary PK, and people posted a ton of feelings on those. Again, some people liked them, some people said to "Leave PK as is". Enter Karma: the wonderful system that again...some like and some hate.

My question is simply this, is there a happy medium that we can compromise on? It seems that the PK'ers simply want there to be no restrictions on PK which really doesn't help those who voted YES to curbing PK and unnecessary deaths. On the other hand, the non-PKish folks have their system in place, but it seems to be taking away from the PKers enjoyment.

Is there a solution you see that would make both sides happy? Should both sides be happy? (This could range from decreasing the power of curses, putting in PK flags, not touching anything.) Lets here the discussion.

Step 1: wait more than one day
step 2:
step 3: profit.

they should make it so you can only curse instead of vengeance rather then if you just get suspect, that way it doesnt matterif the curses are powerful because the pker deserved it. I think the avenger was sufficient and karma is just overkill in stopping pk

If there were true, we wouldn't have made karma.

I think the Avenger system was alright by itself. Karma was definetely unnecessary. The addition of Declare/Defend makes a nice complement with Avenger.

I think the happy medium for everyone would be keep Avenger and Declare, get rid of Karma (blessings and curses).

My solution:
Weak curses, cost 50 karma plus upkeep (upkeep stacks with blessing upkeep), can be done with suspect.
Strong curses, cost 75 karma plus upkeep, can be done instead of vengeance.

As it is, who is ever going to use vengeance, when you could curse someone twice for the same thing?

Sylphas, how would you regulate curse upkeep if both people aren't in the realm at the same time?

a.) The Curser's karma goes down only when she is in the realm.
b.) The Curser's karma goes down only when the Cursed is in the realm.
c.) The Curser's karma goes down only when both she and the Cursed are in the realm.

I see problems with all 3 possibilities, but I'll leave that for another discussion.

Sorry for the hijack.

Maybe the curses need to be made a little weaker. Then someone who has done only a little PK might have to suffer through one curse, no big deal, a hassle but not terrible. But when curses start to stack, assuming they have enough synergy, and that stacking makes it hard for you to earn the karma to buy them off, you reach a point where there's no alternative but to start cutting back on killing.

If they don't have enough synergy, maybe instead we should make curses a fair amount weaker, but make each of them automatically get stronger if you have more other curses, so they have a forced synergy. We want to be sure that you can't shrug them off.

When one or the other are in the realm? *shrug*

Have the curser pay upkeep on the curse?

I suspect there is a way to read a middle ground on this, but unless the PKers are willing to admit that there ought to be a system in place before this becomes a really serious problem (see: Aetolia), then it's difficult to have a realistic dialog.

I've been poking over some of the other comments, and I've had something of a realization that it looks like the PKers in the realm are actually more concerned about how curses might be used against them by other PKers, than they are about how someone like me might use them. Which is something I find really ironic, but it makes sense. Of course they would use it against each other. The people we're talking about (the invalid PKers, not the valid ones) have no self control. They use everything at their disposal to do what they do. Karmic curses would look like just another weapon to them.

Perhaps at the point where curses are actually abused, it becomes and administrative issue? (just thinking outloud here now)

Phooey, was stupid and didn't read the full thread. Ignore moi!

And, an idea on how to have it work, would be for every hour the cursed is on, the person who cursed gets 1% karma tax, but if the person who cursed wasn't on when the cursed was on, then it'd be like added to the person who cursed them.

So if Player A cursed Player B.
Player A logs off for 2 hours.
Player B is logged on for 3 hours.
Player A comes on, and has to pay a tax for the minute he walks on, that'd be -1% karma.
An hour passes, Player B logs off, but not before adding another Karma tax on Player A.
So, the next hour, Player A has to pay -2%, for that hour Player B was logged on at the same time as Player A, and the 2 hours Player A was gone.
An hour passes, Player A has to pay -1% karma for that other 2% he racked up while he was logged off.

Constructive idea:

1) Scrap karma
2) Keep old Avenger
3) Add a maximum number of suspects a person can have (dictated by level?)
4) Make all villages or enemy territory ignore Avenger.

So what are you saying here? If you have X suspects or more you are permanently peaced until it drops below X? Seems more extreme than what we have.



This won't work at all. That means a person who's an enemy of, say, Celest, can go into Celest and kill as many people they want, including every newbie or lowbie they come across, without any repercussion whatsoever.

1) You'd still be able to defend villages/cities etc, and use defend, just no declaring.

2) Newbies are out of the question. Maybe we need an army system (when I say system, RECRUIT to be a member) where villages/cities are free PK for soldiers. I was just playing around with ideas which don't involve hugely limiting curses and hours of burnout.

BTW, it may (or may not) be of interest to you to know that very few curses have actually been given (I think 6 total). Two people have already lifted their curses. One person is holding onto their curse even though that person has enough karma to lift it. Another person is holding on to two curses even though that person has enough karma to lift both. I'm assuming they're both holding onto their curses to save karma.

Yea, I'm relieved by that. I'm trying to look at it objectively, and not get angry when the inevitable hits me.

I was one of the 6 that lifted it! Ethelon is the one with two, I think.

You actually got hit with my favorite curse...